Cherie’s Christmas decorations were barely down this year when backbenchers decided to pounce on the Labour Party.

The issue was the controversial plan for top up fees and 150 backbenchers signed a petition in protest.

Although the move didn’t stop the Government in the end it certainly put a dampener on a month that should have been good for Blair.

Gaddafi

Saddam Hussein was captured and Gaddafi’s public promise to abandon Libya’s nuclear weapons programme provided some justification for the war in Iraq.

But rather than lick his wounds Blair embraced the opposition with typical hyperbole, threatening to turn the fees issue into a vote of confidence in his Government.

Similarly he said he would quit if the Hutton inquiry discovered he had lied, debate raged over whether this was the move of a courageous politician or a Prime Minister feeling the strain.

But the fact that he himself admitted he was fatigued by “a thousand people kicking my backside morning, noon and night,” it seemed to be the former rather than the latter.

Air marshals

Alistair Darling spearheaded another controversial policy and had the unenviable task of convincing airlines to accept air marshals on their flights.

Pilot union BALPA and British Airways came to an agreement that allowed pilots to be informed of the presence of marshals on their flight, at the same time as a Sudanese man was arrested in Heathrow for arriving on a plane from Washington carrying 5 bullets.

BALPA used the event to make a final dig on Darling’s marshal policy by stating, “as we keep saying, it is security on the ground that matters.”

Livingstone returns

‘Red Ken’ was accepted back into the Labour party, providing the Government with the party control over their regional project the Greater London Assembly.

The decision to readmit Livingstone came after an interview with five senior Labour figures in which, the mayor had to show he was ready to stick by party rules.

Tony Blair had to make an embarrassing admission that he was wrong to claim Livingstone would be disastrous for London.

“My prediction that he would be a disaster has turned out to be wrong and I think when that happens in politics you should just be open about it," he said.

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The Tories started the year by trying to clarify their ideological base.

Howard took out a two page advert in The Times setting out his political faith with a 16 point list starting I believe or I don’t believe.